Detente Dinner – September 2012

And so it was decided on Twitter between a liberal man who likes to cook and a fairly conservative woman who likes to cook that there would be a dinner in the land to allow at least a few hours of common understanding to emerge. And the lady opened her big mouth and invited a bold-faced libertarian who likes to cook to join us, too.

And that’s how the Detente Dinner was born. Some day in September, after the primary for what will be yet another hotly contested political race in our state, a few of are going to get together and talk face to face. And eat. There might also be beer involved.

No one has decided a date, or where, or who, or even how many. We have agreed to each inviting half. I think it might be more fun if we are each assigned the task of splitting our list further such that we each have to invite half of those from the left and half of those from the right. I know there is at least one lefty Madison blogger (yes, redundant) I’d love to meet as I do admire her writing.

I’m not going to go into a list here, and of course there will be ground rules for attendance. We haven’t even decided to include spouses/significant others yet. (Although the spouse raised an eyebrow when I suggested his homebrew might be at risk if I hosted. He then promised to be good. Which is funny because the spouse is always very well behaved. I’m the one to cause worry in public. 🙂 )

I don’t mind disagreeing with you all. Heck, some days it’s the most fun I have in an afternoon, but if we are to survive as a vibrant, viable, Midwestern state we are going to have to get through next November with our wits in place. Someone will lose the primary in May. Someone will lose the gubernatorial recall bid in June. Someone will lose the Republican Senate primary in September. We are going to have to be grown ups about it.

So I’m betting on what Wisconsin does well, beer and wonderful produce fresh from the farmer’s market, to bring a few of us together to ease the tension.

Consider your own detente. It’s going to be a very long summer. Don’t let it be ruined by Wisconsin’s own civil war. Choose civility instead.

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Next Tuesday I’ll weigh in on the “never worked a day in her life” debacle. I’ve joked I need to wait to write it until I can put it together without long strings of profanity. That’s still proving to be a challenge. 🙂

BDad. You could attend decked out in Phantom of the Opera garb and keep the mystery intact. 🙂

Cindy and J. Strupp. I do have a great micro-brew source, a family member Brewmeister trained in Germany owns a brewery. He’s out of state, but I could work on getting you specialty Dente Brew if I pulled the right strings. Unless bringing beer across the state lines is also illegal. 🙂